Essentials of Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

The Complete Guide for Schools and Practitioners

Donna Lord Black, Alan S. Kaufman, Nadeen L. Kaufman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119709220
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Éducation en psychologie

A robust and comprehensive description and implementation roadmap of SEL across all levels of your school's curriculum In Essentials of Social Emotional Learning (SEL): The Complete Guide for Schools and Practitioners, learning expert and advocate Donna Black delivers a rigorous and compelling case for the adoption of crucial SEL components in your school, as well as a step-by-step guide to its implementation. The book walks readers through every step of understanding, designing, implementing, and measuring an SEL program designed to create lasting and powerful change for your students. The author describes strategies to engage students with relationships and instruct them in core skills. Essentials of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) also explores:

• The emergence of social emotional learning as a world phenomenon, including key definitions, critical areas of competence, historical influences, and the role of emotional intelligence in SEL.
• A rigorous review of current problems in education addressed by SEL, as well as the latest empirical support and validation for the model.
• A description of SEL as a sustainable framework for success, including a multi-phase guide to a whole-school implementation of SEL complete with tools, templates, and checklists.

A start-to-finish roadmap on the implementation of social emotional learning in schools of all sizes, Essentials of Emotional Learning (SEL ) is a must-read resource for school administrators, teachers, and parents of school age children with an interest in addressing the barriers often faced by students.

SECTION III
SEL AS A SUSTAINABLE FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESS

Seven
GETTING STARTED: A MULTIPHASE APPROACH TO WHOLE‐SCHOOL IMPLEMENTATION OF SEL

INTRODUCTION

The future of any society depends upon an educated workforce, but with the mounting problems and barriers that impact learning, along with declining resources, the task of educating today’s young people has become quite a challenge. Add to this an increasing demand for academic accountability, and the pressure on educators and school leaders may seem overwhelming, if not insurmountable. Even with educators’ best efforts, this simply may not be enough to prepare today’s students for the workforce of the future. The current challenges in education require, if not demand, systemwide changes, and SEL offers schools the changes that are needed. When implemented at a system level and with a focus on equity, SEL promises to transform education so it can meet the demands of educating today’s youth. This chapter describes a process for achieving this transformation, and Figure 7.1 provides a visual model for what schools can achieve when implementing SEL through a coordinated, school‐based, systemwide framework.

Figure 7.1 Coordinated, school‐based, systemwide framework for implementing SEL.

To be clear, implementing an SEL initiative is not intended to supplant existing processes or practices. Rather, the purpose of SEL is to improve upon these processes by coordinating and linking efforts to one another and focusing on meeting the needs of the whole child, not just some of those needs. Accordingly, SEL will require a shift in mindset about how education has long operated. Making this shift will not be easy, and some may view SEL as an added burden on schools, especially for teachers. To be clear, getting started with SEL requires a significant amount of work, and, while teachers necessarily will play a vital role in the process, it is not to be perceived as something for which teachers alone will be responsible. Everyone must share the responsibility for implementing SEL, and as the mindset about teaching and learning begins to shift, this will become more apparent. Not only will SEL help schools operate more efficiently by eliminating redundancies and duplicated efforts, it also will help them better serve students by removing many of the barriers to learning that create inequities in education. So, schools need not fear SEL as an additional “thing,” for it is meant to support existing efforts, not create a new one. It is intended to improve outcomes not just for students but also for the systems that serve the students. Despite the intense work required for moving the SEL initiative forward, it promises end results that will justify the efforts and rewards that are likely to ...